Professor Jackie Harrison awarded UNESCO Chair

Professor Jackie Harrison, CFOM Chair and Joint Head of the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield, has been awarded the first UNESCO Chair in Media Freedom, Journalism Safety and the Issue of Impunity.

Professor Harrison, who is attending and participating in the UN World Press Freedom Day in Accra, Ghana, said: “The chair is recognition of the increasing complexity and use of restrictions – lethal and non-lethal – ranged against a free and independent news media around the world. The on-going attacks on news journalism and journalists undermine freedom of expression and access to information. My role is to act as a bridgehead between academia and policy through the production of high quality research, information, documentation and teaching within the Sustainable Development Goals agenda (16.10) that contribute to the sustainable development of free and independent news media worldwide and ultimately a safer environment for journalists and journalism. To this end my colleagues and I are building a worldwide journalism safety research network (JSRN), introducing new forms of measuring attacks on journalism and journalists to better understand their subtlety and diversity, and researching how the factual media can aide post conflict reconstruction”.